It is a crossroads village, standing on the banks of the Glenelly River, 16 miles (26 km) south of Derry.

The local Gaelic Athletic Association club, Glenelly St. Joseph's, was established in 1891.

[7] In 2015 Glenelly Ladies senior football team won the Tyrone and Ulster Intermediate Championships.

The village had applied for membership of the National Ski Club Ireland in 2012 but had faced opposition from critics who argue "there is no snow".

Among the notable people that have come from Plumbridge are James MacCullagh 1809–1847, mathematician at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD); his brother John MacCullagh, lawyer of Trinity College Dublin; American frontiersman Robert Campbell; Minnesota legislator Robert Campbell Dunn;[8] and Peter McCullagh, a statistician at the University of Chicago.